NaNoWriMo: How I Failed, and Why I'm Glad

Hello and welcome!

In today’s post, I’m going to tell you about some of my writing history, my journey to becoming a writer, and how NaNoWriMo played a role in that.

If you don’t know what that is, fear not!

I will be explaining that first.

Then, I’ll talk about how I started writing.

Next, I’ll talk about my attempts at NaNoWriMo in years gone by (Spoiler alert, it was only twice).

Finally, I’ll tell you why I am glad that I lost NaNoWriMo.

I hope you enjoy this tale of woe and triumph!

What is NaNoWriMo?

NaNoWriMo stands for National Novel Writing Month.

Every year, typically during the month of November, a bunch of authors around the world attempt to reach a significant writing goal.

While some authors give themselves individualized goals, there is one goal that is more or less the norm.

This is why the whole challenge was created.

That goal is: to finish an entire 50,000 word draft of a novel.

That works out to about 1,700 (more accurately 1,667) words each and every day for an entire month!

For some miracle workers, this isn’t that big of a challenge, but for a lot of us, it totally is!

If you sign up on the website, NaNoWriMo.org, you can join with other authors and motivate each other to complete daily goals!

There may even be prizes if you reach your goal by the end of the month, which makes you a NaNoWriMo winner!

For many, the month of October is spent preparing and outlining the novel, so that November can just be spent drafting.

Therefore, October has been called Plot-tober or Prep-tober to denote that.

Now that you have an idea of what I’ll be talking about let’s get into the story!

My history with writing began early.

If you’re familiar with my bio, you’ll probably know that I’ve been writing and telling stories since I first gained the ability.

I used to play with my sisters and cousins, as one does, and we would come up with characters and stories all day long.

That may seem like normal children, but for me, it went deeper.

I always knew that I was going to write and share my stories with the world someday.

In fact, one of my childhood dreams was to write a movie that Jerry Lewis would star in.

Since he was in his prime back in the fifties and sixties, you can imagine my surprise to discover that the movies I loved weren’t just in black and white for the aesthetic!

Beyond that, I wrote journal entries and little stapled-together books for my sisters and I to enjoy.

When I got into my preteens, I was more than happy to keep making up stories and coming up with grand plans to write them down.

However, I struggled to, because school took so much of my writing energy by that time.

Instead, I would just imagine these marvelous scenes in my head every spare moment, living in my own little world.

As a teenager, I struggled more with depression.

Because of that, I had a hard time getting anything done at all.

That included writing, or even planning any stories most days.

When I could think about it, I kept going back to the same characters and story ideas, tweaking them in my mind little by little.

In my later teens, I attempted to write that most precious novel series countless times.

I would start, maybe finishing a chapter or two, then have to stop.

By the time I got back to it, I would see that the part I had written before was so badly written, that I thought I needed to fix it immediately before moving on.

Then, I’d go for a while without being able to write, and by the time I got back to it, I would have changed the story in my mind so that the entire draft would have to be thrown out.

The cycle continued so many times I stopped keeping track!

When I was in college, I was really nervous to show my writing to the professor, because I didn’t have any way of objectively knowing if it was terrible or not.

After getting the first draft of my first paper back to revise, I saw that it had been given an A- grade.

I was shocked and ecstatic to see that!

That was really when my writing confidence started to rise enough that I worked at it a little bit more often.

Because of my college English classes, I wrote essays and poetry.

I did write more poetry on my own after, and I rewrote some of the poems and songs that I had written poorly in my early teen years.

I really started taking a shine to short stories at that time, too, because it allowed me to write the stories I wanted to tell.

The difference was that it was in a form that was short enough for me to finish a draft in one sitting.

Then, it didn’t matter if I came back with my perfectionist cap on!

That was actually the best way to come back!

But I was still not able to make any progress on the novels that had been my dream to write for so long!

A couple of years went by, and I got married and had my son within the first year.

I loved him dearly, and going back to work at my job in retail was rough.

I wished I could just work from home and stay with him all the time.

My ideal job would have been as an author, so he inspired me to try again.

This time, though, I did some research, and that’s when I learned about NaNoWriMo.

That November, when I was back to work and had a nine-month-old baby, I decided that I was going to make the time to work on my novel!

I used my phone most of the time because it was easier than booting up my slow laptop computer, and I could use it with one arm while my baby slept in the other.

I also discovered a free app that was meant to help authors organize their novels as they write. (Since I can't for the life of me remember what it was, I won't link it here. I stopped using it pretty quickly, anyway.)

One day, not super far into the challenge month, I had my baby laying next to me on the bed while I wrote.

I was on a roll that day, with 2,000 words and counting!

Before I knew it, a tiny hand grabbed at my phone, swiping right across the screen.

I had no idea how he did it or what he pressed, but every. Last. word. That I had written that day was gone.

I tried for a while, through tears, but I couldn’t bring them back, no matter what I did.

That was so disheartening, that I thought it was the reason I gave up on the challenge a few days later.

I have since come to believe that it was not entirely at fault.

I didn’t attempt the challenge the next year.

By then, my son was walking, and that just added a whole other challenge I didn’t want to be distracted from.

I was still working and wishing I could be a writer instead, but not enough to work as hard as I should have for it.

During the following year, however, after having my daughter, I was thinking hard about my dreams once more.

We took a vacation and went on a trip, and during those couple of weeks, I decided to write.

Not like I had ever done before, but I mean really write!

This time, I had learned a lot more about how to write a novel, even though I really needed to learn the rest from experience.

I started with a completely new story idea, which I had barely any plans for.

Then, I just started writing.

I was writing at least a thousand words every day.

By the end of our vacation, which was about three weeks long, I had 25,000 words!

I learned that I worked best by never thinking too far ahead in the book, but only working one scene at a time.

Using that method, I finished my 50,000 word draft over the next couple of months at home.

It was the very first time I had ever gotten that far on a single project!

And it was while I worked part-time, had two kids under 3 years old, and got ready to move!

I decided then that I was going to actually win NaNoWriMo that year!

I had written one full draft, so I was confident that I could do it again!

We moved on the first of October, and I was super excited to get back into writing.

But, I was trying to wait until the right month, so I forced myself to ignore the excitement and only plan the next novel until it was time.

Well, that turned out to get boring really fast.

I discovered that I simply could not get my brain to come up with any of the details I wanted to complete an outline.

And more than that, I lost interest in the story completely before November could arrive.

I tried to write, but within three days, I found myself hating the book that I had been so in love with the month before.

I couldn’t get my characters to come onto the page with any kind of realism or charisma.

In the end, I gave up trying, because I didn’t want to train myself into hating the writing process, only to churn out unusable crap.

That was my second NaNoWriMo attempt, and my second failure.

At the time, I was so angry with myself!

I didn’t understand how I could have messed it up so badly!

How had I gone from actually completing a full-length draft to lasting less than a week when it really mattered?

It took me a bit, but eventually I realized that it was because I had been fighting against my own proven writing process.

I couldn’t work with an outline, but now I realize that I didn’t have to!

All the years I had struggled to write had been because of more than just “Laziness.”

I am a Discovery Writer, and I have to write a story while I’m excited about it.

Even if that means I have to make myself get excited some days.

And planning ahead but refusing to let myself write when I have the urge to is a terrible idea for me!

That's why I’m glad that I failed.

I had to fail the second time so that it would really sink in for me that this is how I am, and that it’s not going to change.

I always kind of thought that I just had to have other people relying on me, and then I could push through.

Using the NaNoWriMo site to show strangers my daily word counts seemed like the right move.

But it didn’t work.

Now that I understand myself better, I’m writing more than ever!

I finally published my first book, although it is just revised poetry from several years ago!

Now I am joining fellow writers in writing communities!

And guess what?!

I’m actually doing it!

I’m also well on my way to publishing my first collection of short stories, with more in the works!

Now that I’m here, I treasure the experiences that brought me!

Even if they were a huge disappointment at the time, I know now that I needed them to grow.

Hopefully this has been an inspiration to you, and can help you learn from your own experiences.

I hope to see you again sometime.

Thanks for stopping by!